God – Page 17 – Maverick Philosopher

God, Possibility, and Evidential Support for Non-Contingent Propositions

Mike Valle gave a presentation yesterday before the ASU philosophy club on the skeptical theist response to the evidential argument from evil. A good discussion ensued among Guleserian, Nemes, Lupu, Reppert, Valle, Vallicella, et al. Peter Lupu made a comment that stuck in my mind and that I thought about some more this morning. For what puzzles him puzzles me as well. It may be that we are both just confused.

1. Let us assume that our concept of God is the concept of a being that has a certain modal property, the property of being such that, if existent, then necessarily existent, and if nonexistent, then necessarily nonexistent. Call this the Anselmian conception of deity. It follows that God exists, if true, is necessarily true, and if false, necessarily false. Simply put, the proposition in question is either necessary or impossible, and thus necessarily noncontingent.

2. Peter's question, I take it, was: how can such a noncontingent proposition have its probability either raised or lowered by any empirical consideration? In particular, how can considerations about the kinds and amounts of natural and moral evil in the world lower the probability of God exists? If true,then necessarily true; if false, then necessarily false. Peter's sense — and I share it — is that evidential considerations are simply irrelevant to the probability of noncontingent propositions.

3. The problem — if it is one — arises in other contexts as well. I once argued that conceivability does not entail (broadly logical) possibility. I got the response that, though this is true, conceivability of p raises the probability of p's being possible. That is not clear to me. Assuming the modal system S5, if p is possible then necessarily p is possible, and if p is necessary, then necessarily p is necessary. (The possible and the necessary do not vary from world to world.)

I happen to think that S5 caters quite well to our modal intuitions. Assume it does. Then It is possible that there be a talking donkey is necessarily true, if true. If so, how can the fact that I (or anyone or all of us) can conceive of a talking donkey raise the probability of the proposition in question?

4. Reppert made a comment in response to Lupu about the probability being epistemic in nature. I didn't follow it. If p is noncontingent, and we are concerned with the probability of p's being true, and if truth is not an epistemic property (i.e., a property reducible to some such epistemic property as rational acceptability), then I don't see how evidential considerations are relevant.

The ComBox is open if Victor or Peter want to add to their remarks.

On Praying for Christopher Hitchens

There is something strange, and perhaps even incoherent, about praying for Christopher Hitchens if the prayers are not for his recovery or for his courageous acceptance of death, but for conversion or a change of heart. Let's think about it.

I do not play the lottery; I have good reasons for not playing it; I have no desire to win it, and I believe that I would be worse off if I were to win it. Suppose you know these facts about me, but say to me nonetheless, "I am praying that you win the lottery," or "I hope you win the lottery." Surely there is something strange about praying or hoping that I get something that I don't want and that I believe would make me worse off were I to get it. But beyond strange, it may even be incoherent. Given that I do not play the lottery, there is no way I can win it; so if you hope or pray that I win it, then you are hoping or praying for the impossible. Of course, you could hope or pray that I start playing.

Hitch does not want salvation of his soul via divine agency, and he has reasons that seem good to him for denying that there is such a thing. And he presumably believes (though I am speculating here) that survival of bodily death and entry into the divine milieu would not be desirable. For one thing, his brilliance would be outshone by a greater Brilliance which would be unbearable for someone with the pride of Lucifer, the pride of the light bearer. It may also be that he believes, as many atheists and mortalists do, that the meaning of life here below, far from requiring a protraction into an afterlife, is positively inconsistent with such an extension. "How boring and meaningless eternity would be, especially without booze and cigarettes and (sexual intercourse with) women!"

Hitch has lived his life as if God and the soul are childish fictions. As a result, he has done none of the things that might earn him him immortality and fellowship with God, even assuming he wanted them. This suggests that it is not just strange, but incoherent to pray for Hitch's metanoia. For that would be like praying that he win the lottery without playing, without doing the things necessary to win it.

If a merciful God exists, then he should do the merciful thing and simply give Hitch what he wants and expects, namely annihilation. Either that, or assign him another go-round, or series of go-rounds, on the wheel of samsara until such time as he is ready to accept the divine offer of everlasting life.

As for the prayer day in his honor, Hitch won't be attending.

On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

This post examines Richard C. Potter's solution to the problem of reconciling creatio ex nihilo with ex nihilo nihil fit in his valuable article, "How To Create a Physical Universe Ex Nihilo," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 1, (January 1986), pp. 16-26. (Potter appears to have dropped out of sight, philosophically speaking, so if anyone knows what became of him, please let me know. The Philosopher's Index shows only three articles by him, the last of which appeared in 1986.)

I. THE PROBLEM

We first need to get clear about the problem. On classical conceptions, God creates ex nihilo, out of nothing. He is not a Platonic demiurge who operates upon some preexistent stuff: he creates without it being the case that there is something out of which he creates. Nor does God create out of himself, a notion that presumbaly would give aid and comfort to pantheism. God creates out of nothing. Given that God creates out of nothing, how is this consistent with the apparent truth that something cannot come from nothing? The latter, the principle of ex nihilo nihil fit, seems to be an intuitively self-evident metaphysically necessary truth. Let us assume that it is. As metaphysically necessary, it is not a truth over which God has any control. Its truth-value is not within the purview of the divine will. Our problem is to understand, if possible, how it can be true both that God creates out of nothing, and that out of nothing nothing comes. Potter offers an ingenious solution.

Ex nihilo nihil fit is interpreted by Potter in terms of the following Principle of Creation by Compounding:

PCC. For any object O and time t, if O comes into being at t, then there exist some objects out of which O is composed and those objects existed prior to t.

Potter sees the problem as one of reconciling (PCC) with the following principle:

ENP. God created contingent objects in such a way that there was a time t₁ at which contingent objects came into being, although there was no time prior to t₁.

On the face of it, (PCC) and (ENP) are logically inconsistent.

Continue reading “On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit“

Gutting, Dawkins, and Russell’s Celestial Teapot

In his recent NYT Opinionator piece, On Dawkins's Atheism, Notre Dame's Gary Gutting writes, describing the "no arguments argument" of some atheists:

To say that the universe was created by a good and powerful being who cares about us is an extraordinary claim, so improbable to begin with that we surely should deny it unless there are decisive arguments for it (arguments showing that it is highly probable). Even if Dawkins’ arguments against theism are faulty, can’t he cite the inconclusiveness of even the most well-worked-out theistic arguments as grounds for denying God’s existence?

He can if he has good reason to think that, apart from specific theistic arguments, God’s existence is highly unlikely. Besides what we can prove from arguments, how probable is it that God exists? Here Dawkins refers to Bertrand Russell’s example of the orbiting teapot. We would require very strong evidence before agreeing that there was a teapot in orbit around the sun, and lacking such evidence would deny and not remain merely agnostic about such a claim. This is because there is nothing in our experience suggesting that the claim might be true; it has no significant intrinsic probability.

But suppose that several astronauts reported seeing something that looked very much like a teapot and, later, a number of reputable space scientists interpreted certain satellite data as showing the presence of a teapot-shaped object, even though other space scientists questioned this interpretation. Then it would be gratuitous to reject the hypothesis out of hand, even without decisive proof that it was true. We should just remain agnostic about it.

The claim that God exists is much closer to this second case. There are sensible people who report having had some kind of direct awareness of a divine being, and there are competent philosophers who endorse arguments for God’s existence. Therefore, an agnostic stance seems preferable to atheism.

I have a serious problem with Gutting's response to the Russell-Dawkins tag team. Gutting concedes far too much in his reply, namely, that it even makes sense to compare the claim that there is an orbiting teapot with the claim that God exists. Instead of attacking this comparison as wrongheaded from the outset, Gutting in effect concedes its aptness when he points out that, just as there could be (inconclusive) scientific evidence of a celestial teaspot, there could be (inconclusive) experiential and argumentative evidence for the existence of God. So let me try to explain why I think that the two existence claims ('God exists' and 'A celestial teapot exists') are radically different .

Continue reading “Gutting, Dawkins, and Russell’s Celestial Teapot”

Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Speech and Muslim Oversensitivity

This is a slightly redacted version of a piece first posted on 18 September 2006 at the old PowerBlogs site. I repost it not only to save it for my files, but also because it it important to remember not only the successful and unsuccessful acts of Islamist terrorism worldwide, but also the many incidents which betray the illiberal and anti-Enlightenment values of our Islamist opponents (e.g., the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the Danish cartoon 'caper,' etc. etc. The analog to the fatwa would be the Pope putting a price on the head of Andres Serrano, the 'artist' famous notorious for his 'Piss Christ.')

……………

People need to face the fact that Western civilization is under serious threat from militant Islamic fanaticism. (And it may be coming to a theater near you.) Yet another recent indication of the threat is the unreasoning umbrage taken by many in the Islamic world over a mere QUOTATION Pope Benedict XVI employs in his address at the University of Regensburg entitled, "The Best of Greek Thought is an Integral Part of Christian Faith."

Benedict's talk is only tangentially about Islam; it is primarily about the role of reason in the posing and answering of the God question, and about whether Christianity should be dehellenized. The Pope begins by mentioning a dialogue "by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both." Then comes the 'offending' passage (bolding added):

Continue reading “Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Speech and Muslim Oversensitivity”

“Some of Us Just Go One God Further”

I've seen this quotation attributed to Richard Dawkins. From what I have read of him, it seems like something he would say. The idea, I take it, is that all gods are on a par, and so, given that everyone is an atheist with respect to some gods, one may as well make a clean sweep and be an atheist with respect to all gods. You don't believe in Zeus or in a celestial teapot. Then why do you believe in the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob?

What Dawkins and the gang seem to be assuming is that the following questions are either senseless or not to be taken seriously: 'Is the Judeo-Christian god the true God?' 'Is any particular god the true God' 'Is any particular conception of deity adequate to the divine reality?' The idea, then, is that all candidates for deity are in the same logical boat. Nothing could be divine. Since all theistic religions are false, there is no live question as to which such religion is true. It is not as if there is a divine reality and that some religions are more adequate to it than others. One could not say, for example, that Judaism is somewhat adequate to the divine reality, Christianity more adequate, and Buddhism not at all adequate. There just is no divine reality. There is nothing of a spiritual nature beyond the human horizon. There is no Mind beyond finite mind. Man is the measure.

That is the atheist's deepest conviction. It seems so obvious to him that he cannot begin to genuinely doubt it, nor can he understand how anyone could genuinely believe the opposite. But why assume that there is nothing beyond the human horizon? The issue dividing theists and atheists can perhaps be put in terms of Jamesian 'live options':

EITHER: Some form of theism (hitherto undeveloped perhaps or only partially developed) is not only logically and epistemically possible, but also an 'existential' possibility, a live option;

OR: No form of theism is an existential possibility, a live option.

Theist-atheist dialog is made difficult by a certain asymmetry: whereas a sophisticated living faith involves a certain amount of purifying doubt, together with a groping beyond images and pat conceptualizations toward a transcendent reality, one misses any corresponding doubt or tentativeness on the part of sophisticated atheists. Dawkins and Co. seem so cocksure of their position. For them, theism is not a live option or existential possibility. This is obvious from their mocking comparisons of God to a celestial teapot, flying spaghetti monster, and the like.

For sophisticated theists, however, atheism is a live option. The existence of this asymmetry makes one wonder whether any productive dialog with atheists is possible.

Companion post: Russell's Teapot: Does It Hold Water?

Freud or James? Wish-Fulfillment or Inducement to Strenuous Living?

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), The Future of an Illusion:

It would indeed be very nice if there were a God, who was both creator of the world and a benevolent providence, if there were a moral world order and a future life. But at the same time it is
very odd that this is all just as we should wish it for ourselves.

William James (1842-1910), "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life":

The capacity of the strenuous mood lies so deep down among our natural human possibilities that even if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in a God, men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest.

Both of these passages support the view that God is a posit, a postulate, a projection. But there is a striking difference. Freud, seeing the origin of the God-projection in weakness, takes this as
discrediting the God-idea. Having its genesis in our neediness, the God-idea is false or at least unworthy of belief. James, however, viewing the God-idea as an expression of our robustness, takes this fact as a verification of the idea of God.

Of course, there are two different notions of truth in play. I don't know whether Freud ever discussed theories of truth, but I'd guess he is a correspondence-theorist: an idea is true if it corresponds to reality. But James is a pragmatist: an idea is true if it works, if it is something good for us to believe in the long run. For James, we get more out of the game of existence when we believe in God and all that entails: a moral world order that places an ethical demand on us; an ultimate explanation of why anything exists and why we exist; a final guarantor of the veridicality of our ideas; a provider of sense and purpose; a repository of hope; a securer of immortality and adjustor of happiness and virtue. Believing in God, we live better, richer, fuller lives; we wring from existence its "keenest possibilities of zest."

To resolve the debate between Freud and James one would have to get clear about the nature of truth and its connection to human flourishing. The problems are deep and perhaps insoluble. But that doesn't stop them from being fascinating and worth pursuing. And we don't know they are insoluble. If we believe that they are soluble, that truth about ultimates is attainable, and we strive for it, then too we will wring from "the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest."

Companion post: Freud on Illusion, Delusion, Error, and Religion

And Yet Again on the God of the Philosophers: A Summing Up

This topic is generating some interest. I 've gotten a good bit of e-mail on it. Herewith, a summing-up by way of commentary on an e-mail I received. Joshua Orsak writes:

I wanted to email you to tell you how once again you have elevated the medium of the Internet blog with your recent threads on "The God of the Philosophers" and "The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob". As a minister, a person interested in mystical experience, AND with a keen interest and even passion for philosophy, I have always found myself perplexed why we have to bifurcate our heart-based and mind-based encounter with the world like that. Personally, I've always thought of philosophy (of religion) and religion as encountering the same Divine reality in different ways. In philosophy we study God as an object, in religion we encounter Him as a subject.

Continue reading “And Yet Again on the God of the Philosophers: A Summing Up”

Robert Oakes Weighs in on the God of the Philosophers

I got a phone call from philosopher of religion Robert Oakes yesterday. In the course of a lengthy chat, I mentioned my recent post on Pascal and Buber and asked him what he thought of it. Today I received the following from him by e-mail:

Very good to talk with you. Short comment on that El Stupido notion of Buber-Pascal. The idea, presumably, is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a proper object of worship, while the God of the Philosophers is a bloodless abstraction. But, of course, God (for the philosophical theist) is that than which a greater is metaphysically impossible. So: is a being Who is worthy of worship greater (ceteris paribus) than one who is not? Of course. End of issue, No?

An admirable instance of pithiness. Bob's argument could be extended as follows. A quintessentially philosophical definition of 'God' is the one that derives from Anselm of Canterbury: God is that than which no greater can be conceived. Borrowing the phrase 'great-making property' from Plantinga, we can say that God instantiates all great-making properties. Now being worthy of worship is a great-making property. Because no concept, idea, or abstraction is worthy of worship, it follows from the philosophical definition alone, without appeal to any (putative) revelation or anything from religion, that the God of the philosophers cannot be a concept, idea, or abstraction.

But not only that. It also follows from the Anselmian definition that nothing short of a worship-worthy being could be God. So a First Cause could not count as God for a philosophical theist who operates with the concept of God in Judeo-Christian monotheism. Within this tradition the God of philosophy is not different from the God of religion. It is the same God, but approached via discursive reason rather than via faith in revelation.

Still More on the God of the Philosophers Versus the God of Abraham, et al.

Ken e-mails and I respond in blue:

I turn on my computer and check out the Maverick Philosopher and suddenly half of my day is shot. First I have to look up the word 'pellucidity' and then I am stuck trying to figure out why your claim about the phrases 'God-P' and 'God-R' does not seem right to me.

It sounds like I'm doing something right! You can look up a word without getting out of your chair. Here's a tip that you may already be aware of: type 'define: pellucidity' (without the inverted commas) into the Google search box and you will get a page of definitions, some of them from reputable sources. (I don't consider Wikipedia a particularly reputable source.) Needless to say, this works for almost any word inserted after the colon and not just for 'pellucidity'!

I agree that the sentence [from Martin Buber], "What the philosophers describe by the name of God cannot be more than an idea," is false but to state that that 'God-P' and 'God-R' have the same referent, if they have a referent, seems false to me as it carries an assumption of the monotheism of the 'God-R' that may not be present in 'God-P.' The idea that there is and can only be one God is one that does not have to be accepted in 'God-P' and I do not believe that it would be possible, except by defining 'God-P' ='God-R', for 'God-P' and 'God-R' to always have the same referent. Maybe you can point out where I am wrong and what I missed.

Well, every discussion occurs within a context, a context which cannot be ignored or set aside, since the very meaning of the terms of the debate is influenced by the context. The present immediate context is Pascal's exclamation, "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars" and Buber's comment thereon. The Pascalian exclamation and the Buberian comment themselves fit into a wider context, Judeo-Christian monotheism. The question before us is whether, within this Judeo-Christian monotheistic context, there is any merit to the notion that what philosophers qua philosophers talk about and argue for and against is numerically different from what religionists qua religionists talk about and try to relate themselves to. My answer is plain from my earlier posts: this notion has no merit whatsoever.

Your suggestion seems to be that the God(s) of the philosophers needn't be one, but could be many, even if the God of the religionists must be one. My answer to you is very simple: in the precise context I have specified, namely, the context of Judeo-Christian monotheism, both the God of the philosophers and the God of the religionists is one. Polytheism is simply not a Jamesian live option within this tradition and certainly was not for Pascal and Buber whose utterances provide the immediate context of my remarks.

Of course, there is nothing to stop you or anyone from shifting the context. Philosophers are free to make a case for polytheism if they care to. Within the community of polytheists, the question could arise whether the gods of the philosophers (the gods the polytheistic philosophers argue for) are the same as the gods of the religionists (the gods the polytheistic religionists invoke in prayer, etc.) But that question is not my question.

Note that I am not merely stipulating that 'God-R' and 'God-P' have the same reference. That would be arbitrary and unmotivated. What I am doing is unpacking the concept of God what we already have and work with in the Judeo-Christian tradition. My point is that within this tradition, pace Pascal and Buber and many others, it makes no sense to imagine that what the philosophers are talking about when they talk about God is numerically different from what the religionists talk about when they talk about God.

Finally, none of my discussion presupposes the existence of God. As I said, I am unpacking the concept of God, and this concept is what it is whether or not it is instantiated.

More on the God of the Philosophers

Spencer Case, 'on the ground' in Afghanistan, e-mails:

Your recent post discussing the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham and Isaac caught my interest. Having grown up in a religious home, I have always been of the opinion that arguments for theism argue for something different than what believers take themselves to believe in. After all, how many religious people take themselves to be praying to an unmoved mover or a-being-greater-than-which-cannot-be-conceived? For this reason, I have not felt that my atheism could be threatened by any of the arguments for theism, even if they turn out to be successful because they argue not for God but for God*.

No doubt it could be true that you could make an identification between the God of the philosophers and the God of the believers if you have established the existence of both. My point is none of the arguments for the existence of God even try to argue for the God of the believers.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Well, Spencer, it looks as if my earlier post, despite its pellucidity and penetration, made no impression on you.

Let's use 'God-P' to mean 'God of the philosophers' and 'God-R' to mean 'God of the religionists.' Now my claim is that the two phrases, though the differ in sense, have the same referent, if they have a referent. Thus I do not assume that they in fact have a common referent; my claim is that, if they have a referent, then they have a common referent. You are undoubtedly familiar with Frege's distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung. To use his old example, 'morning star' and 'evening star' have the same referent despite their difference in sense and in mode of presentation (Darstellungsweise). One and the same celestial body — the planet Venus — is presented in two different ways. Now in this case we know that the terms 'morning star' and 'evening star' have a common referent whereas in the God case we do not know this. So my claim is merely that 'God-P' and 'God-R' refer to one and the same entity if they refer to anything.

It may help to distinguish between REFERENCE and REFERENT. 'Meinong's favorite impossible object' and 'the round square' both lack a referent; but they have the same REFERENCE despite their manifest difference in sense.

Therefore, I reject your assertion that one needs to establish the existence of a common referent of 'God-P' and 'God-R' as a condition of establishing that they refer to the same thing if they refer at all.

Your main argument seems to be as follows:

1. The philosophical arguments for God are arguments for the existence of God-P, not of God-R.

2. Religious people qua religious people do not believe in or affirm the existence of God-P, but of God-R. (E.g. religious people who think about God or address God in prayer are not relating to an unmoved mover.)

3. Atheism is the denial of the existence of God-R. Therefore:

4. The philosophical God arguments, even if sound, have no tendency to show that atheism is false.

A very interesting argument! I reject the argument by rejecting the assumption on which it is based, namely, that God-P is not identical to God-R. To the contrary, I claim that they are the same God, albeit approached in different ways. The philosopher qua philosopher approaches God via discursive reason unassisted by scriptural or other revelation, whereas the religionist approaches God via faith and revelation. Now it may be (it is epistemically possible that) there is no God; but that does not alter the fact that the REFERENCE of the God-talk of philosophers and that of religionists is the same.

Think about it: when Aquinas was working out his Five Ways, was he trying to establish the existence of a mere concept or abstract idea? How could a mere concept create heaven and earth? Was he trying to prove the existence of something numerically different from the God of the Bible? Of course not. Aquinas was a philosopher, a religionist, and a mystic. It was the same God he was aiming at (and from his point of view, contacting) in his philosophical reasoning, his prayerful devotions, and his mystical experiences.

People get confused by the phrases 'God of the philosophers' and 'God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' They think that because the phrases are different, and their senses also, that the phrases cannot have the same reference. But the reference is the same even if there in is no God. For the concept of God we are operating with is the concept of a being that satisfies both narrowly philosophical and narrowly religious exigencies. And this is so whether or not the concept is instantiated. The philosopher qua philosopher wants an explanation of the existence and intelligibility of contingent beings and finds his explanation in God, who is the real-ground of existence and intelligibility. The religionist qua religionist has a soteriological interest: he seeks a solution to our awful predicament in this life, and finds his solution is a relationship with a personal Being. Now what needs to be understood is that that real-ground and this personal Being are the same.

Or do you think that God can't walk down the street and chew gum at the same time?

Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers

"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars." Thus exclaimed Blaise Pascal in the famous memorial in which he recorded the overwhelming religious/mystical experience of the night of 23 November 1654. Martin Buber comments (Eclipse of God, Humanity Books, 1952, p. 49):

These words represent Pascal's change of heart. He turned, not from a state of being where there is no God to one where there is a God, but from the God of the philosophers to the God of Abraham. Overwhelmed by faith, he no longer knew what to do with the God of the philosophers; that is, with the God who occupies a definite position in a definite system of thought. The God of Abraham . . . is not suspectible of introduction into a system of thought precisely because He is God. He is beyond each and every one of those systems, absolutely and by virtue of his nature. What the philosophers describe by the name of God cannot be more than an idea. (emphasis added)

Buber here expresses a sentiment often heard. We encountered it yesterday when we found Timothy Ware accusing late Scholastic theology of turning God into an abstract idea. But the sentiment is no less wrongheaded for being widespread. As I see it, it simply makes no sense to oppose the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the God of religion — to the God of philosophy. In fact, I am always astonished when otherwise distinguished thinkers retail this bogus distinction. Let's try to sort this out.

It is first of all obvious that God, if he exists, transcends every system of human thought, and cannot be reduced to any element internal to such a system whether it be a concept, a proposition, an argument, a set of arguments, etc. But by the same token, the chair I am sitting on cannot be reduced to my concept of it or the judgments I make about it. It too is transcendent of my conceptualizations and judgments. The transcendence of God, however, is a more radical form of transcendence, that of a person as opposed to that of a material object. And among persons, God is at the outer limit of transcendence.

Now if Buber were merely saying something along these lines then I would have no quarrel with him. But he is saying something more, namely, that when a philosopher in his capacity as philosopher conceptualizes God, he reduces him to a concept or idea, to something abstract, to something merely immanent to his thought, and therefore to something that is not God. In saying this, Buber commits a grotesque non sequitur. He moves from the unproblematically true

1. God by his very nature is transcendent of every system of thought or scheme of representation

to the breathtakingly false

2. Any thought about God or representation of God (such as we find, say in Aquinas's Summa Theologica) is not a thought or representation of God, but of a thought or representation, which, of course, by its very nature is not God.

As I said, I am astonished that anyone could fall into this error. When I think about something I don't in thinking about it turn it into a mere thought. When I think about my wife's body, for example, I don't turn it into a mere thought: it remains transcendent of my thought as a material thing. A fortiori, I am unable by thinking about my wife as a person, an other mind, to transmogrify her personhood into a mere concept in my mind. She remains in her interiority delightfully transcendent.

It is therefore bogus to oppose the God of the philosophers to the God of Abraham, et al. There is and can be only one God. But there are different approaches to this one God. By my count, there are four ways of approaching God: by reason, by faith, by mystical experience, and by our moral sense. To employ a hackneyed metaphor, if there are four routes to the summit of a mountain, it does not follow that there are four summits, with only one of them being genuine, the others being merely immanent to their respective routes.

I should think that direct acquaintance with God via mystical/religious experience is superior to contact via faith or reason or morality. It is better to taste food than to read about it on a menu. But that's not to say that the menu is about itself: it is about the very same stuff that one encounters by eating. The fact that it is better to eat food than read about it does not imply that when one is reading one is not reading about it.

Imagine how silly it would be be for me to exclaim, while seated before a delicacy: "Food of Wolfgang Puck, Food of Julia Childs, Food of Emeril Lagasse, not of the nutritionists and menu-writers!"

Is Atheism Intellectually Respectable? On Romans 1:18-20

Joe Carter over at First Things argues that "We have to abandon the politically correct notion that atheism is intellectually respectable." My own view is that theism and atheism are both intellectually respectable. Carter makes his case by invoking St. Paul:

In Romans, St. Paul is clear that atheism is a case of vincible ignorance: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Acknowledging the existence of God is just the beginning—we must also recognize several of his divine attributes. Atheists that deny this reality are, as St. Paul said, without excuse. They are vincibly ignorant.

Rather than quote the whole of the Pauline passage at Romans 1: 18-20, I'll summarize it. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . . ."

Paul's claim here is that the existence and nature of God are evident from creation and that unbelief is a result of a willful turning away from the truth. There is no excuse for unbelief because it is a plain fact that the natural world is divine handiwork. Now I am a theist and I am sympathetic to Christianity. But although I have one foot in Jerusalem, the other is planted firmly in Athens (philosophy, the autonomy of reason). And so I must point out that to characterize the natural world as 'made' or 'created' begs the question in favor of theism. As begging the question, the Pauline claim about the evidentness of the world's being created offers no support for theism. It is an analytic proposition that there is no creation without a creator. So if the heavens and the earth are a creation, then it follows straightaway that a creator exists.

But is the world a divine creation? This is the question, and the answer is not obvious. That the natural world is a divine artifact is not evident to the senses, or to the heart, or to reason. Of course, one can argue for the existence of God from the existence and order of the natural world. I have done it myself. But those who reject theistic arguments, and construct anti-theistic arguments, have their reasons too, and it cannot fairly be said that what animates the best of them is a stubborn and prideful refusal to submit to a truth that is evident. It is not evident to the senses that the natural world is a divine artifact.

I may be moved to marvel at "the starry skies above me" (Kant). But seeing is not seeing as. If you see the starry skies as divine handiwork, then this is an interpretation from within a theistic framework. But the datum seen can just as easily be given a nontheistic interpretation.

At the end of the day you must decide which of these interpretations to accept. You will not find some plain fact that will decide it for you. There is no fact you can point to, or argument you can give, that definitively rules out theism or rules it in.

If the atheism of some has its origin in pride, stubborness and a willful refusal to recognize any power or authority beyond oneself, or beyond the human, as is plainly the case with many of the cyberpunks over at Internet Infidels and similar sites, not to mention such luminaries as Russell and Sartre, it does not follow that the atheism of all has this origin.

It is all-too-human to suspect in our opponents moral depravity when we cannot convince them. The Pauline passage smacks of that all-too-humanity. There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.

Paul appears to be doing what ideologues regularly do when pushed to the wall in debate: they resort to ad hominem attacks and psychologizing: you are willful and stubborn and blinded by pride and lust; or you are a shill for corporate interests; or you are 'homophobic' or 'Islamophobic' or xenophobic; or you are a fear-monger and a hater; or you are a liar or insincere or stupid; or you are a racist, etc.

Joe Carter does the same thing.

Objection: "You are ignoring the deleterious noetic consequences of original sin. Because our faculties have been corrupted by it, we fail to find evident what is in itself evident, namely, that the world is a divine artifact. And it is because of this original sin that unbelief is inexcusable."

This response raises its own difficulties. First, how can one be morally responsible for a sin that one has not oneself committed but has somehow inherited? Second, if our faculties have been so corrupted by original sin that we can no longer reliably distinguish between the evident and the non-evident, then this corruption will extend to all our cognitive operations including Paul's theological reasoning, which we therefore should not trust either.

For a different take on Carter's piece, see Michael Liccione's Why Atheism Can Be Respectable.

God: Necessary or Noncontingent?

Many theists in the tradition of Anselm and Aquinas define God as a necessary being. But if God is a necessary being, then he cannot not exist: he exists in all broadly-logically possible worlds. The actual world is of course one of these worlds. So it would seem to follow from the very definition of God favored by Anselmians that God exists. But surely the existence of God cannot be fallout from a mere definition!

I have hammered the Objectivists (Randians) for their terminological mischief as when they rig up 'existence' in such a way that the nonexistence of the supernatural is achieved by terminological fiat. So doesn't fairness demand that I hammer the Anselmians equally? (This is one way of attaching sense to Nietzsche's notion of philosophizing with a hammer, although it is not what he had in mind.)

The trouble with defining God as a necessary being is that 'necessary being' conflates modal status and existence. For any item we ought to distinguish its modal status (whether necessary, impossible, or contingent) from its existence or nonexistence.

The concept of God as "that than which no greater can be conceived" is the concept of a being that exists in every possible world if it exists in any world. But from this one cannot validly infer that God exists. For it might be (it is epistemically possible that) God exists in no world, in which case he would be impossible. God is either necessary or impossible: that was Anselm's great insight. He cannot be a contingent being.

If we want one word to express this disjunctive property of being either necessary or impossible, that word is 'noncontingent.' So we should not say that God is a necessary being. We should say that he is a noncontingent being.

Companion post: Necessary, Contingent, Impossible: A Note on Nicolai Hartmann

Poetry as a God Substitute?

From the mail:

Thanks for your blog. It deals with matters of real interest (…using the word 'interest' in its original sense of 'it matters'). [From Latin inter esse, which is suggestive.]

Perhaps you could elaborate on something you mentioned in your (very funny) post on some aphorisms of Wallace Stevens:

After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption. What a paltry redemption! It would be better to say that there is no redemption than to say something as silly as this. Learn to live with the death of God, my friend! Don't insert a sorry substitute into the gap. Don't try to make a religion of what is only a dabbling in subjective impressions. Compare John Gardner, "Fiction is the only religion I have . . . ." (On Writers and Writing, p. xii.)

I doubt you are saying that poetry, perhaps even all art, ‘is only a dabbling in subjective impressions’ because to say that Greek tragedy, for example, is only a dabbling in subjective impressions would surely be saying something even sillier than what Wallace Stevens says. Moreover, you mention that you have ‘nothing against art properly chastened and subordinated to the ultimate dominatrix, Philosophia’. So what did you mean?

Lastly, are there any books of literary criticism/aesthetics you think are especially worthwhile? It seems that apart from Plato and Aristotle, the best treatment of it outside of poets’ letters and journals is Jacques Maritain’s ‘Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry’.

Best wishes, and keep up the great work.

Thanks for the response. It would indeed be absurdly silly to maintain that all of poetry is "only a dabbling in subjective impressions." But note that the context is critical commentary on certain aesthetic aphorisms of the distinguished American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). Wallace is the focus of my interest in that post and no one else. And my focus is not on his poetry but on certain aesthetic (and thus philosophical) observations of his about poetry and art in general.

What I am objecting to in the passage you quote above, and quite strenuously, is the notion that poetry, especially Stevens' sort of poetry, could be an adequate substitute for God, or that belief in poetry could adequately substitute for belief in God. To my mind that is silly, absurdly silly. And Wallace's talk of redemption in this context makes a joke of the quest for genuine redemption. No one who understands what the religious yearning for redemption and salvation is all about could trivialize it in such a way as to suggest that the writing or reading of poetry could satisfy it. That's ridiculous. Imagine a naked Jew standing before a grave he was forced to dig himself, about to be shot down by a Nazi SS officer. Imagine telling him that redemption from meaningless suffering is to be had from the poems of Wallace Stevens.

What I'm saying is: be honest and don't misuse words. You cannot plug the gap caused by the death of God (Nietzsche) by putting some paltry idol in its place. Poetry in Stevens' style would be such a paltry ersatz. Better nihilism than idolatry. The death of God is an 'event' of rather more significance than the discovery that Russell's celestial teapot has been destroyed by an asteroid. The death of God, as Nietzsche well understood, has grave and far-reaching consequences. Knock out the celestial teapot and nothing of moment changes. The death of God is the death of truth and meaning. Everything changes.

As for your question about lit crit recommendations, I'd have to think about it.